


Happy Little Accidents

by Thatmalu



Series: amputee!YA Eddie [2]
Category: IT (1990), IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Amputee Eddie Kaspbrak, Artist Eddie Kaspbrak, Christmas Fluff, College Students Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Domestic Boyfriends, Domestic Fluff, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak is a Good Significant Other, Established Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, First Christmas, Fluff, Gift Giving, I wrote this drunk on Christmas, Light Angst, M/M, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier is a Good Significant Other, Soft Eddie Kaspbrak, Soft Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Soft Richie Tozier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28331217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thatmalu/pseuds/Thatmalu
Summary: “I bought you a bigger pen!” Richie told Eddie excitedly after coming home from the store. He pulled out a jumbo pen with cutesy cartoon turtles all over it, something to replace all the pencils Eddie had snapped while relearning to write with his left hand. “Now don’t take your anger out on the cute little turtles. I know you love them.”“Ha fucking ha,” Eddie grumbled.The funny thing though was that it worked. His inability to break the structure of the pen kept his grip tight and helped him concentrate on forming his letters. As he kept writing, something odd began to happen. The pen would glide more smoothly and Eddie soon felt it was even easier to write than with his right hand. Before, his hand-writing had been chicken scratch that would put his many doctors to shame, but now it was actually decently legible.“It’s not uncommon for some parents to… correct their children’s writing hands,” Wentworth mused over dinner one night. “I wouldn’t put it past your mom to make you use your right hand when you’re supposed to be a lefty.”
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: amputee!YA Eddie [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2074806
Comments: 8
Kudos: 61





	Happy Little Accidents

**Author's Note:**

> my sincerest apologies for how this looks being written and posted from my phone in a cabin in the middle of nowhere<3 this is just something small and sweet I’ve been talking to the wonderful artist Autumn about for several weeks. 
> 
> Some context for the fic: it’s the aftermath of my other fic, Guide Me Home, Old Scatterbrain (part 1 of this series). If you don’t want to read that 23k piece, (spoilers) it ends in Eddie losing his arm from an infection caused purposefully by Sonia to make him feel like he needed her. Didn’t work out for her so much, because Eddie has his supportive boyfriend!
> 
> Enjoy ❤️

Everything in the world seemed quite off-balance now. Even if Eddie Kaspbrak could stand up straight, his body felt weighted down by more than just an uneven amount of limbs. Along with a newly missing arm, guilt was wedged into his chest like a hot ball dripping wax on his insides, bubbling and boiling uncomfortably because of what had happened with his mother.

Despite knowing she had been the one making him sick — that she had gone as far as to kill her own husband for the sake of keeping him  _ ill  _ — that her actions had cost Eddie a lifetime of normalcy — it still felt wrong to think of that word all of his friends kept throwing around.

_ Abuse. _

It was made worse because he truly felt deep down that she had done everything out of love. Eddie knew it was  _ wrong,  _ but he could see the logic in keeping him safe, even if it was  _ twisted.  _ Mostly, Eddie kept this to himself, because the notion that his mother did anything for Eddie’s sake only made Richie angry.

Seeing Richie’s reaction to what Sonia had done was the thing that haunted Eddie the most. Anger was unbecoming of someone like Richie; someone who spent every waking moment trying to bring joy and laughter to the people around him. Eddie could tell Richie was  _ trying _ to keep the mood around Eddie light, to be as cheerful as possible despite the situation. When Eddie thought his life was ultimately over, Richie had encouraged him not to drop out of school or quit his dream of going to college. In the beginning, both of them had been too angry, fueling each other’s fires as they fought, but with their love came patience. 

Now that Eddie was living here with Richie and his parents until graduation, they had all their time together to work through their frustrations. Richie was soon back to being Eddie’s cheerleader on the sidelines. Instead of the track team, now it was physical therapy.

“I bought you a bigger pen!” Richie told Eddie excitedly after coming home from the store. He pulled out a jumbo pen with cutesy cartoon turtles all over it, something to replace all the pencils Eddie had snapped while relearning to write with his left hand. “Now don’t take your anger out on the cute little turtles. I know you love them.”

“Ha fucking ha,” Eddie grumbled. 

The funny thing though was that it  _ worked.  _ His inability to break the structure of the pen kept his grip tight and helped him concentrate on forming his letters. As he kept writing, something odd began to happen. The pen would glide more smoothly and Eddie soon felt it was even  _ easier _ to write than with his right hand. Before, his hand-writing had been chicken scratch that would put his many doctors to shame, but now it was actually decently legible.

“It’s not uncommon for some parents to…  _ correct _ their children’s writing hands,” Wentworth mused over dinner one night. “I wouldn’t put it past your mom to make you use your right hand when you’re supposed to be a lefty.”

So now when Eddie wrote, he let his natural instincts take over and quickly grew into the feeling of writing with his  _ wrong _ hand. There was still a frustration with the way he had to move, constantly spearing ink and ruining whatever he had tried to write. Bill and Ben had offered to help write his schoolwork for him, but he knew he’d have to learn to get used to it. 

Eventually, they drove down to Manhattan with Stanley to start college and Eddie had to fend for himself with his new predicament. The stares were easy enough to get used to; everyone in Derry had always looked at Eddie with disgust or pity. The only difference in New York was the knowledge that he’d never run into the same people twice outside his classrooms or apartment building. There were way too many people to worry about. However, this didn’t stop him from feeling self-conscious and at times still angry at his inability to make  _ anything _ right, whether it be practicing his cooking, writing his essays for classes, or just writing a check for his portion of rent. 

Then, Richie had an epiphany.

“Why don’t you try drawing or painting something?”

“How would that help anything, Richie?” Eddie sighed, trying to clean the smearing marks all over his notebook.

“Well, it may not stop you from doing that,” Richie admitted, staring at Eddie’s smudges. “But there aren’t really any rules with art, right? You don’t have to start from left to right. If you start practicing using your hand in other ways, maybe you’ll build up, like… I don’t know, muscle memory or some shit. Get more strength in it. Maybe you’d stop falling over so much, too.”

Eddie rolled his eyes, but at this point he’d try anything new. He didn’t really have many hobbies, after all. Sure, he liked cars, and he was already in an engineer program at NYU to hopefully do something with that long term. But he couldn’t afford  _ a car _ on his own, so maybe he could practice doodling some stick figures in his notebook for shits and giggles.

With each day of practice, more and more glee swept over Eddie when he’d drop his pencil to the paper and draft some nonsensical scene. He mostly practiced drawing his friends, in various memories he’d sketch into his notebook until he found a  _ style _ that suited him. All he could think about between sketches was buying markers and new pencils and bringing color into the imaginary worlds he created on the lined white sheets. The only thing more satisfying than completing a piece was showing it to Richie and watching his face light up, pointing out all his favorite expressions and adding funny lines the  _ characters  _ could say to match the tone Eddie had drawn out for him. It soon became a weekend ritual, making these tiny little comics together, featuring all of their favorite people in these grand adventures they’d imagine in their head. His drawing became a new kind of therapy for him that brought him more joy than he had ever thought it could. 

When their first Christmas in the city came around, Eddie had decided to do something more grand with his new found talents. He doodled something simple in his sketchbook — one that Richie had gotten Eddie for his birthday in November — and showed it to Stan one evening when Richie was working late at the radio station. Stan gave him some feedback and Eddie had called Beverly to get her opinions about color themes. Afterwards, he finally sat down to start painting in Stanley’s room where Richie wouldn’t find it.

“Are you going to be in here a lot?” Stanley asked. Eddie almost gave him a snarky comment in return, expecting Stanley to be annoyed, but he only looked at Eddie in amusement. “I don’t mind,” Stan continued, looking back down at his homework. “It’s really nice to see you so invested in something again. I miss the soapbox racecar days.”

“You remember that old thing?” Eddie chuckled. 

“I usually try to hold on to things I’m fond of,” Stan smiled back. “Creating things always made you happy — I’m glad you found something new that you enjoy.”

Eddie felt himself blush down to his chest, smiling sheepishly at the doodle he was soon going to repaint onto a fresh canvas. He had never thought of himself as an artist or  _ creator _ of any sort, but the more he thought about what Stan said, the more he could remember the warm pride that would fill his chest whenever he’d sneak back to his racecar and tinker with it. It was the same feeling he was getting now, putting all his focus into the colors and design of his new work. Except now he wasn’t just making something fun in secret for himself, but pouring all of his  _ love _ into something, love he felt for Richie to make him something special to cherish. 

Richie had been so proud of Eddie’s accomplishment in therapy — both the physical and the counseling Eddie had begun when they arrived in New York. Now Eddie was taking all of that work and practice with his underused hand and utilizing the advice of his psychiatric therapist to truly orchestrate a colorful fabrication of all the goodness that Eddie had in him.

It wasn’t much — the more Eddie looked at the final product, the more he panicked about what else he  _ could’ve  _ done with it. No matter how much Stan tried to console Eddie and share with him all the things he liked about the painting, Eddie still felt a pang of embarrassment thinking about showing it to Richie. 

“Eddie,” Stan sighed on Christmas Eve. “I love you dude, but if you don’t chill out I’m going to throttle you.”

“I don’t want to hear a goddamn thing from you, Stan! Your holiday has been over almost three weeks, you can’t feel how stressed I am right now!”

“Dude, I’m still stressed,” Stan shrugged. “I had to get you gentile assholes Christmas presents, too.”

Still, Eddie couldn’t even  _ sleep _ thinking about his painting. When Richie came home at three in the morning, he had found Eddie pacing in their bedroom, gnawing away at his fingernails.

“Ho Ho Ho!” Richie exclaimed, scooping Eddie up into a hug. “Merry Christmas, my little love! But you’re not gonna get any presents from Santa if you don’t go to sleep soon!”

“Rich,” Eddie whined, shoving his face into Richie’s wet, snow-dusted chest. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“My present,” Eddie moaned. “I should’ve just gotten you the vinyls you wanted, but I made you something instead and it’s so fucking stupid —”

“Whoa, whoa,” Richie said, pulling Eddie back to look down at him. “You  _ made  _ me something? Eddie, that’s not stupid! That’s amazing!”

“I don’t even — I don’t even want to show you it now…”

“Why?”

Eddie just groaned, feeling sick with embarrassment. Richie clucked his tongue and pulled Eddie back into his chest for a tight hug, kissing Eddie atop of his head. 

“You wanna show me now? Technically it  _ is  _ Christmas already.”

“I might as well get it over with,” Eddie mumbled, gently pushing himself away from Richie. He adjusted the empty sleeve on his side and tucked it into his pocket. Winter was getting frustrating now that he had so many extra layers to worry about, flapping around without his right arm to fill them. 

With a slight tremble in his remaining limbs, Eddie opened the closet and pulled the canvas out of the ‘hiding’ place Richie had likely known about for days, bashfully handing over the carefully wrapped creation. Richie took it with a bright smile, sitting down on the edge of their tiny bed and he began to tear into it like an excited toddler.

“Easy, Richie!” Eddie told him, trying to keep his voice down so they didn’t wake up Stan. “Wait until you see how bad it is before you destroy the damn thing!”

“Wait!” Richie exclaimed. “Go under the bed and get my present to you! We can open them together.”

“Oh. Oh no.”

“Eds, c’mon. If it’s that bad, we can both have a good laugh over it.”

Eddie knelt down, fumbling slightly trying to balance and simultaneously pull out a poorly wrapped package from under Richie’s side of the bed. It was obvious that Richie had no idea how to fold the wrapping paper or where to tape it and just decided to twist the entire roll of tape around the whole thing. This made it difficult to tear into, Eddie needing to peel away at the bits of tape just to get to the paper before he finally got the damn thing open. Just as he pulled out a lump of fabric, Richie pulled the canvas out and turned it over to look at it.

Immediately, Eddie felt queasy and nervous, ignoring whatever he had pulled out of Richie’s packaging and watching his boyfriend’s face carefully. The feeling was only exacerbated when Richie’s smile faded and he blinked down at Eddie’s painting with a blank expression. This was much, much worse than being laughed at, Eddie thought shamefully.

“Eddie…”

“Jesus, I know,” Eddie groaned, trying to hide his face behind his hand. “I should’ve just gotten you something, it was so stupid —”

“Eds,” Richie said, looking up at Eddie with wet eyes. “This is incredible.”

“It — what?” 

Richie looked back down at the painting, gently running his fingers down the texture of the acrylics. “It’s so beautiful, Eds… it’s…  _ us…  _ up on my old roof. It’s our first kiss.”

“You can tell?” Eddie asked incredulously. They had shared so many kisses up on that roof, he had no idea he had conveyed it well enough that it was  _ that  _ kiss.

“I can  _ feel  _ it,” Richie breathed in awe. “Like… I feel like I’m there again. I can feel the breeze in the trees and remember how bright the moon was… how warm you felt,” he added, chuckling lightly with a blush. He looked up at Eddie with nothing but pure love in his eyes. “How could you think this was stupid?”

“I just wanted it to be perfect,” Eddie whispered, his heart fluttering fondly in his chest. 

“It’s better than perfect,” Richie beamed, leaning over and kissing him fully, his large hand warm as it cupped Eddie’s cheek. When he pulled away, he whispered against Eddie’s lips, “Thank you.”

“You’re so welcome,” Eddie giggled, filled with bubbly giddiness. 

“Uh… maybe you should, uh… try yours on now.”

“Oh — oh!” Eddie looked down at the — “Uh, what is this?”

“Here…” 

Richie had Eddie close his eyes and lift his arm up so Richie could roll the mystery clothing over his head and help stick his arm through. He heard Richie groan before guiding Eddie over to where they kept their mirror. Then, Eddie opened his eyes.

Eddie tried — really, he tried  _ so hard _ not to burst out laughing, but it was just too much. The ugly green and bright orange  _ sweater _ Richie had tried his damndest to knit or crochet or  _ whatever he had done to this monstrosity _ didn’t even meet Eddie’s naval. The bottom hem was cropped short and uneven, diagonal across Eddie’s chest. The one thing Richie had done right was closing up the right side and made a sweater absent of a sleeve Eddie had to worry about.

“Oh, Rich… this is amazing.”

“I am  _ so  _ sorry,” Richie guffawed, half-amused and half-blushing with embarrassment. “I must’ve gotten the measurements off…”

“Because in your mind I’m the size of a fucking elf,” Eddie giggled, patting his bare belly peeking out from the bottom.

“I mean, you  _ are,  _ but…” He sighed and shook his head, looking sheepishly down at Eddie. “I’ll take you out for dinner this weekend to make up for it.”

“You don’t have to,” Eddie grinned. “This… is perfect. I’ll never forget it.” He jumped up on his tiptoes and kissed Richie as fervently as he could as his laughter still played along his lips. “Merry Christmas, Rich.”

He felt Richie smile against him, planting another small kiss against his bottom lip. “Merry Christmas, Eds.”


End file.
